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Friday, February 26, 2016

Will your cat still love you if you put him or her on a diet?

There are only two treatments for excess weight in cats: less calories in (diet) and more calories out (exercise).The weight here is in kg, so this male indoor cat was almost 12kg.

Ever considered putting your cat on a diet? Worried how
your cat might respond? According to reports, some owners believe their cats
will be vindictive if their calories are restricted. But a recent report found
that cats exhibited more affectionate behaviour when fed a calorie restricted
diet. Some reports have gone so far as to declare “cat’s won’t hate you” if you
diet them. How will this impact on the human:feline bond? Let’s break it down.

First, the background. Part of the issue of course is how
we keep cats. So why do cats get fat in the first place? We confine them and
that’s quite a reasonable thing to do – for their safety and that of prey
species. We’re not in the midst of a rodent plague, so we don’t need cats out
hunting. In the wild they’d ideally subsist on a diet of 12 mice each day - but
each mouse has to be caught, which

requires expenditure of calories.

Instead, we serve our cats calorie-rich meals. Risk
factors for obesity in cats include living in an apartment (not much room or
incentive to exercise), being the only cat in the household (no one to play or
fight with), being male, being castrated (no testosterone to stimulate
behaviours associated with mating, such as going out and looking for a partner,
getting into scraps with other potential partners and so on), and being fed a
prescription diet (high nutrient density).

Ad-lib feeding is also a risk (and
so common with calorie-dense, dry foods).

So how come people don’t just put overweight cats on a
diet? After all, we control what they eat. Unlike people, they can’t duck off
to McDonald’s or stash some Maltesers when we’re not looking (they can,
however, get into your stash of
Maltesers if you’re not careful).

Well, if you’re asking that question perhaps you’ve never
experienced a hungry cat. As the authors of the study note, pre-feeding
behaviours include begging, following meowing, and pacing. These can be
seriously disruptive. For example, if I want to make it to the bathroom in the
morning before feeding the cats, I have to navigate the hallway while two
meowing cats simultaneously figure-eight around my legs, while crying loudly,
without tripping over. If I happen to hit snooze on the alarm clock, I am
nudged with a closed paw. Hit it again and the claws come out. That or a three
legged cat dive-bombs me from the top of the wardobe. I reward this behaviour
by waking up, getting out of bed, and…once I get down the hallway…feeding him.

Let’s go back to the lab. For the study, they enrolled 58
obese cats and fed each cat one of three diets (all equal calories) – a
high-fibre diet; a low-carb, high protein diet; and a control diet formulated
to maintain weight in adult cats. They compared weights at day 1, week 4 and
week 8. They also compared behaviours at weeks 4 and 8. They looked at
pre-feeding behaviours: prefeeding begging, following, meowing and pacing, as
well as post-feeding behaviours: jumping in the owner’s lap, purring, resting,
sleeping and visiting the litter tray. The owners were asked whether they
thought their cat’s affection had changed with the feeding of the new diet.

The great news was that 3 out of 4 cats had weight loss
recorded at 8 weeks, with the high-fibre diet fed cats losing more weight over
8 weeks.

BUT…the pre-feeding “blackmail” was dialled up,
regardless of the diet. Cats didn’t necessarily beg for longer, but when they
did it, they did it more. However, they also ramped up the post-meal
behaviours- most notably, jumping on their owners’ lap. Owners felt their cats
were more affectionate.

The way this story is being reported is that this is
great news – owners will feel more bonded with cats because they showed more
post-feeding affection. Not much has been said of the amping up of the
pre-feeding behaviour. I speak to owners of cats with polyphagia – an increased
appetite – due to conditions like
thyroid disease and diabetes. The pre-feeding behaviour can occur frequently
and can be extremely difficult to cope with (these cats are usually much easier
to live with when they are treated).

Interestingly, owners saw pre-feeding begging as
affectionate behaviour. So whether or not this is factored into overall
increase in affection documented is hard to say.

Anyway, it’s great to see a study that addresses both
nutrition and behaviour and raises important questions about the way we feed
the feline members of our household.

You can listen to a podcast of VetTalkTV’s Brian and Kaye
chatting with me about this and another cat food study at this link here.

Veterinary Ethics: Navigating Tough Cases

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